Republished from the show notes of my other site, Fuds on Film.
When this idea was pitched, I thought, obviously I’ve seen Kelly’s Heroes. Everyone’s seen Kelly’s Heroes. Turns out I haven’t seen Kelly’s Heroes, so you get to discover this along with me. I must have been thinking of The Dirty Dozen, although I’m sure at some point we’ll get to that and discover I’ve not seen that either. Must do better.
Anyway, this 1970 outing reunites director Brian G. Hutton, the original G, with Clint Eastwood after Where Eagles Dare, which I have probably confused with Escape to Victory or something. Set during the back nine of WWII, the U.S. Army pushes across occupied France with Nazis putting up stiff resistance. Eastwood’s Private Kelly is part of a unit on the frontlines, who captures a Nazi officer and during interrogation discovers that a small town bank, not overwhelmingly guarded, not all that far from their location, it stuffed to the gunwales with gold. Nazi gold! The best kind of gold.
Already disillusioned with the Army, having been scapegoated and demoted for other officer’s failures, and seeing his current Captain more concerned with looting a boat than the welfare of his men (although he does make sure to warn them not to loot, which is nice of him), Kelly decides to set about nicking the shiny stuff.
As part of his plan he’ll need to convince his platoon, de facto led by the gruff but dependable Master Sergeant “Big Joe”, Telly Savalas, who needs a fair bit of arm twisting, and a number of dodgier characters who don’t, like Don Rickles’ Staff Sergeant “Crapgame”, the fixer for the team, or the, well, I’m not quite sure what what they were going for with Donald Sutherland’ Sergeant “Oddball”. Hippy warmonger? Anyway, he has a tank, so let’s overlook his oddball character traits. Hey, I now understand why his nickname was oddball. How about them cowboys.
Having assembled a team that may or may not have numbered one dozen, cleanliness status unconfirmed, they push into enemy territory, variously sneaking and fighting their way past the Nazis, at cost, eventually chased by gung-ho Major General Colt (Carroll O’Connor), who’s misinterpreted their actions as a great patriotic push worthy of acclaim and the backing of the full division in an otherwise stalled advance.
It’s been a while since I watched a war film of the era, and it’s always a little shocking going back to the rather less dark and gritty aesthetic and narratives that pervaded back then. There’s glimmers of something with more bite to it here – the title is ironic given most of the character’s attitudes and their aims, and nothing is ultimately portrayed as a walk in the park despite skewing more towards comedy, or at least entertainment. It’s still the sort of film where walking on a land mine is not going to involve the special effects department giving you much more than some smoke and a boy that can jump a bit further than most.
It’s still of the time where we all agreed that Nazis were bad, and there was not very good people on both sides. Ironically, at this point in the war that’s probably a much truer statement than at Charlottesville, and it’s telling that the Germans that aren’t plain cannon fodder are perfectly reasonable and not frothing madmen.
Now, as mentioned, turns out I only saw this yesterday, so this is all a bit fresh. I’m not 100% sure how I’ll feel about it a year from now, or if I’ll feel compelled to revisit it. What I can say is that, well, the weight of history would seem to indicate that it’s good, and I enjoyed my time with it. It’s a rare near two and a half hours film that doesn’t feel like it should have had swathes cut from it, and Eastwood and Savalas make a great pairing. Rickles and Sutherland less so, skewing a little too far into goofy territory, particularly Sutherland, but that’s not his fault as much as the scripts.
Yes, it’s an entertaining heist romp, and its rather more jaundiced view of war while by no means unique at the time – this was the year of Catch 22 and MAS*H – but also by no means the most common wartime narrative keeps it within touching distance of contemporaneity. It didn’t rock my world, perhaps, but it made for a very diverting distraction from it.